I have always wanted to be either a cinematographer or a veterinarian.

It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R.E.M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.

The first horror movie I saw, in first or second grade, was My Bloody Valentine [1981], where there's a deranged killer in a miner mask stalking a small coal town.

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.

I was never afraid on stage. That's where I was the least afraid. I could just do what I do and I had the amplification and the lights.

When you create a fence, you keep people out, but you also limit your mobility.

I've never had a mentor. I've always wanted one. I'm actually really disappointed that nobody took my under their wing.

Looking back, [R.E.M.]videos, by in large, have always been art films. I'm thinking of "Losing My Religion." That's a landmark piece.

There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.

There's also something sexual about watching the nubile girl in terror. But you do take on her fear as your own.

Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

We have disagreements as to what race does and ought to mean, but we have a remarkable consensus on what it is, without any ability to define it technically.

Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions god's infinite love.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber, for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.

I've been in a lot of indie movies, where we didn't necessarily have permits or permission. I've even run from the cops in the New York City subways!

Gratitude never radicalized anybody. I don't care if they recognize the past, I just want them to get angry about the present and keep going.

Two heads are better than one only if they contain different opinions.

First the stalk - then the roots. First the need - then the means to satisfy that need. First the nucleus -then the elements needed for its growth.

There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument

What is thy sentence then but speechless death.